How I clean my glasses | Hacker News Reader

How I clean my glasses

tratt.net

314 pointsltratt328 comments

The best method I’ve found so far:

1. Get your glasses wet with warm water.

2. Apply dish soap to both lenses.

3. Gently rub the soapy water over the lenses. For some stubborn things (like sunscreen) in the edges I sometimes gently use a Q-tip.

4. Rinse under warm water. Gently rub with your fingers to agitate the soapy water and help rinse it off.

5. (This is the important step) Adjust the faucet’s flow to a low laminar flow and run the glasses through water, hitting the top of the glasses first and letting the water flow down and off the bottom of the lenses. It might take a couple passes but doing this will eliminate any water droplets on the lenses.

6. Use a clean towel to gently dry the frames. The lenses don’t need drying since the laminar flow eliminated all the water droplets on them.

My process was the same except for #5. Just tried it out and see what you mean! No more drops on the lens! Thanks for sharing

I do almost the same and I completely agree. For step 6 an unused paper towel is what works best for me.

I am guessing this may damage the glasses with the dust but it is fast and effective.

Haha laminar flow. So I'm not the only one. I always wondered.

Exactly what I do!

This works for me. Dish soap is barely a drop that I use to spread. Also clean the frames occasionally with water. For 6, I use a fresh clean underwear instead of a clean towel. One less towel and the usual laundry cycle takes care of the rest.

This is the best way. I do it as a general "reset", to really clean things and start fresh.

In between these sessions, I will use the little wipes. I find that paper they are made of is very similar to chem wipes. I keep the papers in a little box and use them for all sorts of minor tasks.

Me too! I thought I was the only one who did this. Replace step 6 with using my shirt :)

I use similar method, except:

- Do not apply soap to the lenses. Soap is too thick. Apply it to your fingers and rub between fingers to dilute with a bit of water before applying to glasses.

- Use your fingertips as abrasive. Soap is there to dissolve any fats but your fingertips (if clean) are best material to remove anything from your glasses without scratching the surface.

- Few faucets give good laminar flow. I just blow over the glasses. If you do this right, your glass are not scratched and you have cleaned them well, all water will slide off easily.

- Don't ever use towels on either frames or glasses. Towels can easily scratch glass not to mention much softer frames.

I second this. Don’t use any kind of cloth. Just blow over your glasses a few times, droplets will disappear. Even finest cloth will leave scratches over time. Also it will reapply dirt and grease that naturally builds up as you use it

Instead of wiping with cloth, I use a hair dryer in cold setting.

That's bad. You don't want to dry it, you want to remove the water BEFORE it has a chance to dry out.

If you just dry it out, the mineral residue from water will be left on your glasses.

More than that, mineral crystals are incredibly abrasive so next time you try to clean the glasses they will be abrading and destroying your perfect glass surface.

The author of the submission mentions they use distilled water , presumably for this reason

For starters, I have responded to a comment from a user, not to the submission.

And second, using distilled water to clean your glasses must be strong contender for least practical glasses cleaning technique.

Blow the water off

Find that jug of distilled water (make sure there is one at work and at your parents in law), then rinse with it (you can do it, hold the jug in one hand and the glasses in the other, don't use all the water), then use the hair dryer on cold to dry your glasses.

If you need distilled water and hair dryer to do it the result will be permanently dirty glasses, not clean ones.

> Don't ever use towels on either frames or glasses.

Maybe because I get the non-scratch coating, but this has never been an issue for me. Have been doing it for twenty years without issue. Assuming lenses are replaced every several years, which they should be.

Do you get scratch resistant frames, too?

The scratches on the glass do not have to be visible. The surface just gets a tiny bit matte, reducing the contrast and also making cleaning a bit bigger problem.

As to the frames, except for the unavoidable wear and tear in places where it can't be avoided, my current main daily driver Tom Ford acetate glasses look as shiny as on the day I got them, 3 years ago.

My friend has similar frames and they look matte, after less than a year.

No, but they are titanium and don't scratch. Well, not with towel anyway.

Titanium frame is my latest love iteration of my glasses. It makes them more light. I've found that's what I find annoying about glasses, the weight on my head. Not the peripheral. In fact, I've tried lenses various times, and never have been able to go with it. Too much discomfort.

I would like to add: the weight on my nose is more discomforting than grease on my glasses. I sometimes clean my glasses and I'm afterwards like wow, that was dirty. But did it really bother me? Not really. I rather do it for other people, cause it makes me look better, but such isn't a high prio for me (already 'married with children').

I basically do this, but carefully pat dry with either a kleenex tissue or a clean absorbent towel to get the few droplets that inevitably haven't slid off in the not-perfectly-laminar flow.

Agreed. This is the best way. Soap on fingers as you described above and laminar flow.

Other methods introduce too much unnecessary complication which don't make the lenses cleaner. Any kind of absorbent material has the potential of depositing tiny fibers or other specs on the lens surface. And air drying potentially leaves behind impurities the from water.

Almost my exact same method. Just wash your glasses in the sink with soap. It's easy.

Using soap on surfaces that have an oleophobic coating can degrade the quality of the coating. This is even worse with dish soap.

How else do you get rid of grease? The scattering of light on grease on the lenses is unbearable for me whenever I don't use dish soap.

If the oleophobic coating is intact (and good quality) it should come off with just a clean cloth.

The dish soap method worked best for me. But the best method was getting lasik, now my old glasses are in a drawer gathering dust.

I had RK in my 20s. No I'm in my 50s, so I'm back to glasses.

Can't escape that.

Ultrasonic cleaners, with a bit of dishes soap in the water, are the most efficient/effective way (I uses to clean them with water and soap as well, in the past).

They are simple devices that lightly shake objects very quickly, in water. They work well with dirt that is soft (e.g. grease), and therefore not only for glasses, but also for teeth aligners and jewelry/small objects.

Some grease is still sticky, but generally speaking, I do a 10 minutes pass every day, and the eyeglasses have never been cleaner.

BE CAREFUL with coated lenses (in particular, cheap sunglasses there), as they will be destroyed (the coating/film will detach from the lens)!

What uncoated lenses do you have? Polycarbonate lenses usually have an anti-scratch coating, and most lenses have an AR coating as well.

I think the intention was (cheap (coated lenses esp. sunglasses)) though they wrote it as (coated lenses (esp. cheap sunglasses)).

I have a few uncoated lenses, such as semi-disposable safety goggles, and a few uncoated glass lenses of one sort or another, although I expect you didn't mean those.

Correct objection :)

I don't know the technical distinction, but there is a noticeable distinction in prcatice. I guess that "cheap coating" is made by gluing a film; I see this type of coating very often in budget or even not-so-budget sports (sun)glasses.

Cleaning this type of glasses in an unltrasonic cleaner will cause bubbles to form between the film and the lens.

I clean my wife's glasses (it's unfair that she should get both bad eyes and all the extra work associated with it, so I do the parts of it I can).

This is the exact thing I do as well. I have also found that rinsing with hot water helps tiny droplets evaporate quickly without (for some reason? Clean water at home?) leaving drying stains.

My main concern is that the more effective soap may damage coatings. In practise, however, it seems that she has to change lenses often enough that damaged coating does not have time to become a big issue. (This is partially due to how pregnancy and breastfeeding changes the eyes -- we'll see how things go after this.)

The best method I've found so far (I've worn glasses for over four decades):

https://www.amazon.com/Zeiss-Pre-Moistened-Cleaning-Wipes-Co...

If they are especially dirty, I'll rinse them with clean water and maybe a bit of soap first.

Yup, I do this with some nice microfibre for drying / removing any smears afterwards.

I use the exact same cleaners and have for years.

And they are easy to get, I see them at walmart in 50 and 100 count.

I asked the optician how they clean glasses:

- Wash with cold water. Warm or hot water might ruin the coating. (Our water comes supercooled right out of the tap in the winter,so in order to not have my hands instantly frozen into a solid block of ice I go for 15—20 degrees or so.)

- Use a drop of mild dish soap without ammonia.

- Dry them with a soft clean cloth (they use microfiber I think, I just use a random soft towel that doesn't give off any lint/dust)

Doesn't have to be more complicated than that. It takes 20 seconds and my glasses are as good as new.

I second this. Super easy to do and kept my current 1 year old glasses in great shape.

Wash with cold water. Warm or hot water might ruin the coating.

This is why I worry about radiant heat from fires while camping or burning yard debris. Plastic lenses are usually opaque to IR and that means they're heating up even more than you might think.

Another reason to consider glass lenses.

Can you even get glass lenses anymore? I don’t recall seeing it as an option the last time I ordered a pair but maybe since Zenni tends to focus on affordability they don’t bother offering the (presumably more expensive) option.

Yes https://lensfactory.com/ They are so much better.

Do they shatter when you drop them?

They might if you drop them hard enough, but I've dropped glass lenses numerous times and I've never had them shatter on me. Probably helps to have a sturdy frame with barrel hinges, too: https://shop.shuron.com/shop/sidewinder/

Heh, its funny, whenever I see a video of an American with glasses, they don't have a reflective coating. I guess its too expensive over there. I have glasses which have reflective coating and photochromic coating. They're also made of titanium. Very light, despite being -4 or so. My wife has even worse than -4, and she enjoys the same. They're a tad more expensive, yes, and eventually the coating goes bad which with proper usage can be postponed for years (e.g. wear real sunglasses on beach).

Unless they're completely plain lenses the heat could still ruin the oleophobic and anti-reflective coatings.

I once ruined the coating of my glasses by sticking my head into a hot oven to check a disk I was baking. The surface of the lens sort of blistered. From then on I removed my glasses when checking on food in the oven... I also try not to stick my head so far in also.

Chef tip: Take the item out of the oven instead of inserting your head into the oven.

Hanzel and Gretel hate this one simple trick!

Glasses are plastic lenses? I thought they were… glass. Am I wrong? Warby Parker and such are plastic?

They used to be actually glass, but now the majority are plastic.

For people with poor eyesight (like me!) plastic lenses are lighter and can have a higher refractive index, making them thinner than the equivalent glass lenses. Weight is the big thing though.

Are optical coatings that sensitive that warm water might bother them? I'll have to treat my lenses differently.

I've ruined my coatings by wearing them in the sauna before. Sauna temps tend to be around 180.

The anti-reflective coating expands and contracts differently with heat than the plastic lens underneath. A big temperature difference will cause it to crack. So don't use ice cold water, use water that's at room temperature, which is usually what comes out of your cold tap.

> water that's at room temperature, which is usually what comes out of your cold tap.

Is that really your experience where you live? In mine, the cold tap is cold - once allowed to run through whatever's in the pipes in the building, since it's come from underground.

It depends on where you live and the time of year.

I've lived places where in the winter, the tap water is just a couple of degrees above freezing. I've lived in places where in the summer I've measured the tap water at over 90 degrees.

He must live somewhere that doesn't get to any real temperature extremes.

Yeah, I used to wash my glasses in hot water. I didn't notice an instant change, but it noticably degraded their quality after a while. Water straight from your cold tap is the way to go.

I asked my optician to please give me glass lenses and avoid the shenanigans with inferior materials, but they declined citing safety concerns with broken glass. Ah well.

There's absolutely nothing unsafe about glass lenses if you're a normal person and don't abuse them. They're actually superior to plastic in terms of longevity and durability. What I've found is that the tradeoff is durability vs. weight. Glass is heavier than plastic but if your glasses are well-fitted and adjusted, this is not a problem. Also, in terms of cleaning you can be a lot less careful with glass and they won't scratch. I had a pair of glasses with plastic lenses and my wife tried to "help" me by cleaning them with a paper towel when I wasn't around. The lenses got scratched up and unusable. Never again...it's glass lenses in Shuron frames for me!

I would rephrase that as: There's nothing dangerous about them until an accident happens. And that's why it's not worth it to me. I saw my dad's eye surgery from a glass-lenses incident years ago - he was lucky, it still was an awful experience. Should he have been wearing a pair of goggles while working in the yard? Sure. But I've forgotten that too!

Most eye 'glasses' are eye plastics. Plastic lenses are softer than cellulose = kleenex scratches them. There is no easy way to avoid scratching plastic apart from detergent rinsing and soft lens cloth pat drying. I buy true glass lenses, hardened so they break into splinters (I have never broken one) To clean, I wash with warm water and dish soap = they last for years and I need new ones due to eye aging before they ever get scratchy. A few others made this point as well.

I have glass lenses, but I don't care to find out what happens if ever an airbag explodes into my face.

Glass lenses are only good for spherical prescriptions. If you have astigmatism, you need an aspherical lens, which cannot be shaped in glass.

Thats not true, I have glass aspherical lens.

That you wear for prescription glasses? Unlikely. Glass cannot be shaped into aspheres without very expensive grinding and polishing techniques. Multiple glass shapes are typically molded together to make an aspheric lens. The challenge is that molding the lens this way decreases the Abbe number significantly, which is why it’s not used for prescription eye glasses. If you have astigmatism, your lenses are most likely a polymer of some sort. Check with your optometrist.

I know exactly what I have. You can even get glass progressive lenses which are very aspherical. https://lensfactory.com/collections/progressive/products/pro...

I've owned several pairs of aspherical lenses made of glass, ground by competent yet hardly exceptional shops. Only in the U.S. I found people uninterested in selling me glass lenses--exaggerated mimicry, "but they'll be so heavy!", etc.

> "but they'll be so heavy!"

Yeah, they are. If you only have say -2 its no big deal. I have -4 and with heavy glasses (I used to wear such) I get pain in top of my nose rather quickly.

Anyone who is into photography knows this is flat-out untrue. Aspherical lenses are a big deal in the high-end camera lens world. Canon, Nikon, Leica, Zeiss, etc. all have aspherical lenses.

I wear glasses and my glass lenses are made by Zeiss. My left eye has mild astigmatism and the glasses correct it perfectly. Each one is made from a single piece of glass that is ground to shape.

Fun fact: if you're ever institutionalized for suicide watch, they confiscate your spectacles due to a perceived risk of being able to break them and cut yourself, even if your spectacles aren't made of glass.

My opticians have always given me a microfiber whenever I got a set of glasses made, and last time I went I asked for a spare as well. Now I have the habit of having one in my pocket at all times so I don't have to devolve back to using the bottom of my tshirt.

Realistically, I wash my t-shirt much more often than any microfiber cloth...

Yeah, but the fabric of my shirt seemed noticeably worse at cleaning my glasses, so I stopped using that completely. Having a microfiber on hand at all times is very helpful for that

I ordered a pack of 100 off amazon, and I have them everywhere -- desk, laptop back, suitcase, car, bookshelf, etc...

> Our water comes supercooled right out of the tap in the winter

I'm from a place that never really gets below freezing, so I have to ask. Is this serious? If so, that's fascinating. When you turn the tap on, does the water instantly turn to slush on the way out? Does it come out at full speed or sluggishly?

It is serious but in hyperbole. The water is probably near freezing, but not below. Frozen pipes are a big problem in cold regions, they expand and burst, so measures are taken to insulate and keep the pipes warm. Depending on the piping though, sometimes the only resort is to completely drain the pipes during winter and not have any running water for that part of the year. (Common in cottages rather than real homes)

I believe they were exaggerating a bit. Water pipes are typically buried deep enough in the ground that the water gets very cold but not frozen. The pressure in water lines isn't high enough to really drop the freezing point of the water to an appreciable amount.

Groundwater tends to be around the local air temperature averaged across the whole year. It is considerably colder in northern climates.

Not literally supercooled though, pipes aren’t that pristine, they will happily freeze.

I use a tall glass with tap water and some dish soap. Dunk them in while I shower, then remove, rinse off with cold water. Afterwards I could use a towel, but actually I tap them dry with a sheet of toilet paper. I THOUGHT that would leave small dust, but surprisingly, does not.

I use cheap, uncoated glasses though and replace them every 3-4 years anyways.

Same! Except dish soap lathered between fingers first, and I just blow dry them to avoid streaks or fuzz of any kind.

yep. no more microfiber whatever and no “lens cleaner”. i discovered this a long time ago and i think it’s hilarious that others use such care to clean theirs.

this is it. also needs emphasis on getting a clean tea towel or equivalent out of the drawer, do not be tempted to use anything else.

That’s exactly my technique too. Except I wear rubber gloves because the dish soap makes my hands very dry otherwise.

> 5. (This is the important step) Adjust the faucet’s flow to a low laminar flow and run the glasses through water, hitting the top of the glasses first and letting the water flow down and off the bottom of the lenses. It might take a couple passes but doing this will eliminate any water droplets on the lenses.

This final step is also how soldiers get those perfect mirror finishes on their boots and belts!

I did it by using lots of polish, time, and a little (drops of) water. I don't remember holding my boots under a faucet, maybe I could have had an easier time if I'd have known back then. Some folks did use heat guns, but that always made the polish crack for me.

After you’ve water-bulled with the little drops of water how did you get the water off without leaving any streaks? This laminar flow approach collects them up and rolls them off as larger drops so the surface is left dry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0wZLGrxuKg

I rubbed until there was no water.

The water is for lubrication - if you’re rubbing until there is none then you’re abrading the polish surface.

You can get water shedding coatings for lenses. Then you just have a few beads of water when you do this. You can either leave them there to dry or dab at them with a soft cloth like a tee-shirt.

Since I've started doing this I've actually had compliments from optometrists what good shape my lenses are in.

I use this with mods on steps 5 & 6.

We have super hard water. Despite soaping to degrease the lenses, our water never just sheets off like soft or distilled water does on a really clean surface. It beads up and leaves deposits when droplets evaporate. So step 5 is problematic for me.

After the rinse, I set the glasses down on a paper towel - temple pieces extended as if I were going to put them on. The lens frames rest on the paper towel, their lower parts in contact with the towel.

I use canned air to gently drive droplets down front & back surfaces to the bottom of the lenses. They then generally wick away into the paper towel, or else evaporate at the lens/frame interface. No need for step 6. Takes about 30 sec, leaves no spots on the lenses after.

Exactly how I do it. There's no easier way to clean lenses.

I don't use a towel to dry them, as any grit at all will fog the lenses. Instead, I just bang the edge of the glasses against my abdomen to knock the drops off.

They'll eventually fog, but it takes a lot longer.

I do something similar, but I tend to be less particular with using laminar flow, as ensuring that works reliably is difficult. I find I can simply blow on the lenses to drive any remaining droplets off of them.

I do the same. The problem is at step 5: some faucets (at hotels and so on) are automatic (no touch, due to pandemic maybe). I don't have a solution for this yet.

The easiest solution I've found is to use a Zeiss lens wipe; at this stage the lens is already clean so you don't have to worry about pushing dirt around on the lens, and the alcohol on the wipe evaporates quickly and cleanly.

A better solution is to keep a clean microfiber lens cloth that never comes into contact with anything except freshly cleaned lenses to dry them. Unfortunately, for me it's tough to keep one that clean for very long.

A worse solution is just to use the relatively-clean inside of a t-shirt. All three methods have their place IMHO.

I do something similar for the first 1-4 steps, only difference is I use cold water instead of warm or hot.

I don't know how true it is but I read in a few places where hot water and glasses don't mix well. It can mess with prescription lenses and potentially strip away extra coatings you have like auto-tint.

I know hot and warm are different but just to be safe I always go with cool.

It's too bad hot water is bad for lenses because it would be really convenient to be able to clean them while showering.

Opened this page to make post about my secret method for glasses cleaning. Find 50 posts saying to do the same thing I do. The joy of HN...

I do almost the exact thing except with cold water.

I just air-dry my glasses after dish soap cleaning, by whipping it in the air with my arm. Works pretty well actually.

0. Wash your hands :)

It's better to do a final rinse with RO or distilled water.

At the end of that sequence, I finish with a spray of deionized water (made using a resin filter specifically to make DI water), and a clean/dry microfiber wipe. DI water is an amazing all-around cleaner and leaves zero residue.

The best recommendation for it is remembering my chemistry teachers telling us that "water is the universal solvent". Well, filtering and removing all of the stuff previously dissolved in the water turns it into a very aggressive yet gentle solvent. It's great for cleaning surfaces and tools at the shop, windows at home, it makes glassware really shine, and of course, as a final step cleaning eyeglasses.

(I just use a kit & resin from CR Spotless, available online. No affiliation, hope it helps as a starting point)

I learned the dish soap method when I ... accidentally dropped them in dish water.

It is AWESOME.

It is amazing for sunglasses. Clarity is critical for driving, but they also seem to build up oil faster than normal glasses. Dawn makes them meticulously clean.

If you leave your sunglasses in the open in the car, it might be collecting the offgassing from the plastic - that same haze that accumulates on the inside of your windshield. I keep mine in a closed container and it seems to do just fine.

I use an air compressor to blow the droplets away.

I do almost the same thing, but I turn it to scalding hot once I’m done using my fingers so the lenses get hot so they dry faster. So far that hasn’t seemed to damage anything.

This is almost exactly what I do. After a lot of trial and error I found it works for me. The only thing I would add is to never use paper products to dry your Rx glasses or sunglasses if they have plastic lenses; the fibers in the paper will scratch the lenses.

This is exactly what I do. It's always worked fine for me (40+ years)

I do similar but use centrafugal forces to spin dry them almost dry with arm swings. Then I use toilet tissue dabbed to get the final few drops off (not wiped!). Toilet tissue can be scratchy so you might want an alternative but for me it's not doing much work and it's always at hand.

I do some optics design and prototyping for my day job. This is close enough to how I clean expensive optics, except that I would avoid a q tip unless absolutely necessary. The only thing I'd add is if you do need to dry something with a cloth, an old cotton undershirt that's been washed many times does a great job.

Also, I wash my windows at home with plain water and a squeegee.

This is exactly what I do.

I know someone that cleaned their hard contacts like this too.

Avoid moisturizing soap in general when doing this, since they often have silicones, and that can leave a film. Dish soaps are less likely to have them, so it's a decent one to try blindly... or just read the label.

But yep, this is exactly what I do. Usually hand soap, but the stuff I get is just plain soap, no fragrance or moisturizer, so it rinses super easily. And when it's properly clean, the water leaves the surface dry and streak-free.

This is what I do, usually once or twice a day. I seem to touch my face and glasses a lot, so dish soap is important as it removes the grease. Hand soap isn't as powerful and often has additives that will leave a film behind.

Between cleanings when I get a small smudge I go back to using my t-shirt, but I only clean the specific area that is dirty.

I just wanted to thank you for this advice. I just used your laminar flow idea and didn't even need to use my microfiber cloth at all, the lenses were totally clean!

Here's what I did: 1. First pass of laminar flow water from the faucet to remove any large debris. 2. Two sprays of lens cleaner on each side of each lens. 3. Rinse lenses with laminar flow water making sure to leave no droplets behind.

Thank you for changing my algorithm forever.

This article describes way too much OCD and wasted time.

Here's my solution:

  * Buy 4x pairs cheapish glasses from Zenni.

  * Beat the crap out of them.

  * Replace as needed.

A good chunk of people require glasses that need to be custom-made.

Once you also add amenities like photochromic lenses, it quickly adds up.

Yeah, I spend £300+ per pair on not having coke bottle thick glasses that are thin and light, and made out of polycarb.

At least in the US that would be much cheaper: I can get high index (1.74) lenses for +$75: https://www.zennioptical.com/glasses-lenses (so the overall glasses are ~$100)

I have a Zenni pair, I think they are 1.74 and around -6 correction in each eye. They are really cheap compared to other places, but they have very high chromatic aberration on the sides and I don't thing they are perfectly centered.

I think it's something that's more noticeable when you need relatively high power lenses.

This is what I suspected would be the case. You absolutely do get what you pay for when it comes to optics, but equally, you can over-pay for utter rubbish. If you've got the vocabulary (which you do) to describe and understand what to look for, you can't go wrong.

It's good to have a high quality pair from a local shop so you have something to compare Zenni or other online shops to. YMMV of course, but I've had good experiences with Zenni, and only had one pair out of dozens for my family that had issues (seemed to be uncentered or had the PD incorrect), and that was over 5 years ago.

It's nice being able to grab a cheap pair of glasses for activities where there is a high probability of them getting damaged or lost, and having a backup pair handy. The reduced mental load of not having to worry is worth it!

>so you have something to compare Zenni or other online shops to

That's for sure. I bought a pair from 38dollarglasses.com and skipped the antireflective coating option. As it turns out, if you've worn glasses with AR coatings all your life, plain lenses are really, really surprisingly annoying.

Yep. Once your lenses get above -6 diopter or so it starts to become a serious concern. By -10 diopter it's the driving choice in lens material and design.

At -10.5, -11 I always get relatively low refractive index (~1.5) CR-39 based lenses because it's Abbe number is 60. This means I can still read, say, street signs or flanking computer monitors out of the corner of my eye despite the light going through literally >1 cm of material.

Paying more can get you thinner lenses? This is of interest to me as I do have coke bottle-thick glasses.

Yes, absolutely. All depends on your prescription and sizes though.

Most decent optical labs operate on a sliding scale, going thinner and thinner, but costing more and more. Can get quite expensive (relatively), but if you're going to absolutely baby your glasses, and use something like Zeiss single-use lens wipes, yes I think it's absolutely justifiable for something you're going to use all day, every day for several years.

About 12 years ago, I switched to rimless with carbon fibre arms to try and get the weight down as the option to go as thin as I'd like just wasn't there yet, and I was still stuck with traditional glass, so the weight was a concern for me, and my glasses were forever slipping down my nose (ugh).

Maybe 4 years ago I switched over to hingeless titanium frames (almost wire-thin) with rimless lenses that are incredibly thin and light, and made out of polycarb. Not got my prescription info to hand, but it's a world of difference what's available now versus a decade ago.

They're so thin and light now that I frequently forget that I'm wearing them, and can even fall asleep in them! Oops! They stay stuck on my nose too, I never need to push my glasses up my nose.

I thought pursuing thinner and lighter would be an exercise in vanity, but I can honestly say it's significantly improved my quality of life.

Mine vary from "too thick for almost any frames" to "looks like a normal pair of glasses until you look through them" depending on cost. Mine are somewhere around 1/3rd as thick on the edge as cheaper glass.

Look for "high (refractive) index" lenses. It bends light further, so you need less material / less angular difference to get the same effect.

Interesting, thanks! I figured the thickness was just a function of physics and couldn't be changed, but I wasn't aware of the difference in refractive index.

It generally comes with more chromatic aberrations (rainbow splitting of high contrast edges / light sources), but the tech keeps improving and my current pair is only barely noticeable in my normal vision window. At the edge it basically makes text unreadable though, just because the aberrations overlap enough.

Which is much much better than like 15+ years ago, when I had a pair that had enough aberration that I was happy to get the thicker ones the next time. It was kinda fun being a walking spectroscope, but definitely uncomfortable in quite a few cases.

There is high index polycarbonate and high index trivex. But polycarbonate has a side effect of the optics getting blurry the closer to the edge of the lens you get.

Mine are around 800 GBP just to keep them a bit thinner towards the middle with some special cut. Including frames, that's just the total price I remember spending the last couple of times.

Haven't changed them for 8 years now and they're 100% scratches, they lost some protective layer a long time ago from going into the sea with them. One half is glued together. I'm just too lazy to replace them.

I'm one of those people but I also keep a similarly crude technique - simple microfiber that I replace regularly

The article mentions washing them, I have never tried this or nothing to back it up, but I suspect that may be where the problem lies. Just replace the cloth. They cost pennies.

They even go as far as to put them back in bags and such. I don't bother and have never noticed an excess of grease, dust, or anything they do. Mine is just replaced every now and then sitting openly on my desk

It's at the point where I wonder if doing less is more. It certainly seems obsessive

People may say microscratches, yada yada. It's so inconsequential that my eyes go bad before the lenses do due to my treatment.

> A good chunk of people require glasses that need to be custom-made.

Zenni makes their glasses to order; what do you mean?

Even with Zenni my eyeglasses cost over $100. At Costco they cost $300, and at most other places they cost $600.

I used to always go with Costco, but last year I tried Zenni. The frames are definitely flimsier than any others I've had, which I've heard is generally the case for their wire-frame options—I'm sure their heavy plastic frames are more sturdy, but that's not my style. But the lenses seem as good as usual. Except they polished the edges of the lens instead of leaving them frosted, which creates distracting reflections under certain light (with an Rx of around -9/-10 my lenses are 7-8 mm thick). Despite all that I'll probably stick with Zenni in future.

I wash my glasses with a drop of palmolive dish soap and warm water, then blow any water drops off the lenses. An oelophilic coating (available with Zenni) makes this easy, because the water beads up and almost rolls off.

7-8mm thick?! That's insane. I am pretty sure you can get thinner lenses by using a different index. It will be more expensive but definitely worth it. My Rx is -8.5 and my lenses are reasonably thin.

I can definitely get thinner lenses using a higher-index material, but I selected this lens material specifically because it has a higher Abbe number and thus has less chromatic aberrations. The thickness doesn't bother me, but chromatic aberrations do, a lot. I cannot tolerate the excessive colour fringing high-index lenses have, and while contact lenses don't have this problem I dislike those even more.

I have lenses with an optical index of 1.61, which have an Abbe number of 41. In comparison, basic polycarbonate has Abbe 30 (horrible), high-index 1.67 has Abbe 32, and high-index 1.74 has Abbe 33. The best is CR-39 (index 1.5) with Abbe 59, but that will result in an absurdly thick lens, and I'm not sure it's even available in such a strong prescription.

The chromatic aberrations are there but I think you just need to get used to them. Alternative is heavy glasses.

Also - the only aberration I notice is with blue light e.g a bright LED. It goes away if you look directly at it. How is your experience?

That's not true. My glasses are super light and the thickness is not a concern whatsoever. I can shake my head back and forth with my head down and they don't move at all. And for the past decade since my Rx got particularly bad I have always found the aberrations annoying, so no, I won't "just get used to them".

I can't stand chromatic aberrations because they make everything outside of the centre of the lens blurry. This worsens my tendency for one eye or the other to wander if I'm trying to focus on something just at the edge of reading distance (road signs or restaurant menus, for example) and makes driving at night in the rain difficult. My current glasses have an acceptable amount of abberations, but my previous set was horrible.

I really should be wearing contacts and I've tried them several times, but I generally find them very uncomfortable and I've always hated how they take away my perfect close-up vision.

Yeah, I've stepped down from the highest index I've used due to the aberrations. Material and grinding techniques have improved since then in general, but it was quite distracting - shift my head a degree or two and bam, rainbow, and further to the edges of the lens it'd be 3+ distinct colored images of every light source.

It was kinda neat to be a walking spectroscope, and see what different light sources produced. But the novelty wears off fast when it starts blurring and coloring text on the outer edges of computer monitors. I'm plenty happy paying another $100-200 every few years for lenses that don't do that.

It's strange. I have a high index but ... seeing rainbows? I can't relate to this. Why is that? For me, only blue LED'e shift slightly,

It's worse with stronger prescriptions, if that explains anything. And it has in general gotten a lot better in the past 10-20 years or so, so if you're looking through a current pair it may be quite different.

Currently, if I look at any sharp contrast edge in daylight and turn my head a few degrees, it'll be lightly fringed by either blue or orange. In the dark with a three-color RGB LED projecting "white" (rather than a broad-spectrum white source) I can get fairly clearly separated dots of different colors closer to the edges of my lens.

Have you tried contact lenses? I wouldn't mind, but I can't focus properly and read with contact lenses. With normal glasses that's never an issue.

They consistently glue themselves to my eye if I don't use eye drops literally every single hour. Miss it once and it might take a half hour to loosen and peel them off.

Not really an option unfortunately, my eyes are apparently too dry.

At your strong prescription, are there any styles of frames or lenses that you've found reduce facial displacement?

Smaller is better, although I've found a medium sized Ray-Ban carbon frame that looks modern and is also extremely light. Higher index making the lens thinner also reduces displacement. Most people don't notice I have a strong prescription.

> Except they polished the edges of the lens instead of leaving them frosted, which creates distracting reflections under certain light

Could you apply some kind of light paint to the edges? Maybe nail polish?

I could remove the lenses and carefully sand the edges slightly with fine sandpaper to create a frosted effect, but I haven't tried it yet.

if you get the most basic lenses, the glasses are super cheap (since it costs almost nothing to make frames).

if you start adding features (like thinner lenses, or coatings), the price adds up quickly.

i usually spent $60-$120 per pair of glasses on Zenni.

Lenses are much cheaper to manufacture than most people realize. Most of the coatings and upgrades are 95%+ profit with very little cost.

An interesting thing I learned in that industry, the uncut "puck" of plastic/material is usually cut to your prescription via an CNC style machine. The cut instructions are essentially a pre-built CAD file based on your prescription/measurements. A significant cost of the process is paying "click fees" which are essentially IP to use that CAD file or a usages based tier on the CNC machine (however you want to look at it). I think, for the company I was working with at least, it was tied to the CAD file though. I recall some discussion of us changing vendors as current vendor's CAD files were failing QC checks at an unacceptable level. If I remember correctly, it was about $5 of a $20 finished good (averages for a pair of lenses). Every coating imaginable would only add $3 at most to cost of goods.

Memories from ~3 years ago.

IP/Brands drives a lot in this industry and is how Zenni is able to cut costs. A company like Rayban will partner with a lense manufacturer to put a logo on the lense and then charge $300 for the lenses. It's the exact lense the manufacturer would normally sell for $25 but now it has a Rayban logo on it. (I actually had these and ended up scratching off the Rayban logo because it was constantly visible in my periphery).

That sounds about right. I remember having gone to an optometrists office some time back and they were able to cut lenses right there and have glasses ready in an hour. I was amazed and couldn't understand why everyone couldn't do this.

Sunglasses are the worst. They cost basically nothing to make but the profit margin is Inf% b/c of branding. A $20 (at most) pair of non-name sunglasses instantly becomes a $700 pair of glasses once you slap a few PRADA insignias around it.

I used to get my sunglasses from Goodr; they charged $25 for no-slip polarized sunglasses, which were very good. After one of the pairs broke, I decided to get two pairs of Ray-Ban Wayfarers, one for $75, and the other for $200. I knew I was getting fleeced, but I finally wanted a pair of "cool" shades and could finally get them without breaking the bank. :D

The locally made lenses still exists but it's becoming very rare. When I was a kid my parents went to a one-hour place, that made them on the spot. It's still possible but not economical. Not that they passed the savings to the consumer of course. Gotta love economies of scale.

If forgot to mention sales commissions as I was talking about cost of goods. But a variable compensation for the sales person, is a lot of your cost if you are in a retail setting. Believe it or not, your optometrists gets paid commission too (if an employee) as does the person at the desk. It's a sales heavy business. Buy eyedrops, buy lens cleaner, buy here - we really don't want you to walk out the door with your prescription! We have a metric called "capture rate" that our commission is attached to!!

It's not too bad but was a surprise to learn it's much more retail than medical (as a business). I think in most the world it's not even necessary to see a doctor to get glasses, like in the US. I usually leave and buy somewhere else because my doctor just has a crappy selection of frames, every single time, he gives me the prescription when I ask. Then I have to ask for the pupillary distance and he acts like he doesn't know what that is. "Why do you need that?" Because if I buy online they'll ask, "Oh yeah, I can take that measurement".

That makes a ton of sense and explains why opticians are paid so low (relative to other medical fields).

As someone with fairly pronouced Astigmatism in the expensive glasses camp, I'd say:

1) The glasses have to accurately hold my the lens at a specific location and orientation relative to my eyes in order that they actually work.

Off by a little bit and it's world of splitting headaches and crazy distortion

Achieving that positioning, while dealing with my wonky ears, size of head, eye locations etc - requires knowledge beyond current web systems before ordering and - unless completely bespoke fabrication of frames as well - some form of final fitting post delivery.

- The prescription is sufficiently rare that the lens are not mass produced and instead have to be custom ground and cut to fit the frames before the glasses can be assembled.

Have you considered maybe trying audiobooks instead? ))

To your first point: that makes sense!

To your second point: Zenni and competitors do custom grind their orders.

Yup, this is my new go to. I don't even bother with the insurance reimbursement any more.

That doesn’t solve the problem that after a few days of use my glasses are dirty.

Hench, the "beat the crap out of them" step. Wipe them on my shirt or any nearby rag as needed.

I don't know how people can clean their glasses on their clothing. I've only ever managed to make them more dirty and harder to see through.

It always feels like a delicate act to get my lenses cleaner even with a microfiber lense cloth.

Random articles of clothing tend to interact with my glasses like "oh, you have a smudge here? let me spread that smudge all over the surface for you. poof. everything is uniformly cloudy now."

I think it comes across as OCD because the author is logging everything they do. But the gist is basically “buy a 10 pack of cloths and wipe your glasses.”

That’s what I do. And I shake the cloth beforehand to get sand from my pocket off of it. I do exactly four shakes, plus one extra swoosh that technically can’t be categorized as a shake due to its fluidity rating of 95 on the Holloway Motion Scale.

Just seeing “I clean my glasses” (before the title was corrected), I thought: gee it’s about time I place that Zenni order to replace my favorite pair that broke a few months back. Went ahead and ordered two just to have a backup, for all of $30.

Granted I do clean my glasses (soap and water after each shower while they’re steamed up, gently towel dry). And I’m not much for disposable goods, these will last me years. But in the same spirit, I also like that Zenni accepts my expired prescription. My vision hasn’t changed enough to warrant another trip to the optometrist, so why waste the money, or my time, or theirs?

I quite literally just got my first pair of glasses (bi-focals, no less!) yesterday, at the age of 41.

This whole article and thread has been super helpful, but I have to say thanks so much for the Zenni tip!

I was on that site all of 5 minutes before rushing to make an account.

The pages are super easy to read and informative, they tell me instantly whether the frames can go with bifocals and whatnot.

It even helped search by face type and let me do a virtual try-on.

In person places here all seemed hell-bent on upselling me, seemed to be bothered by my questions, and the prices were outrageous!

So now I can buy several cheap pairs, see which I like and then buy several copies to have stored for when I inevitably break my first pair.

I almost never say this these days but holy shit was I impressed all around!

Reading what people do for clean glasses (and as a person with OCD who sometimes gets infuriatingly distracted by the little shapes on my eyeball, much less dirty/scratched lenses), I was already not looking forward to needing these things.

I've worn glasses most of my life. Back in my 20s, after I got my first good job, I paid for the $500-super-duper-fancy glasses. And, I can say they were higher quality than the $30 Zenni pair but not better enough to justify a >1000% markup. As someone else said further down, Zenni glasses have more chromatic abrasion; I've noticed this too. However, constantly babysitting glasses and worrying about scratching/breaking them is not worth the effort for slightly improved image quality at the far sides.

With that being said, I do pay for quality sunglasses. In my experience, Zenni sunglasses are lacking.

I can definitely appreciate paying more for good ones, but for my first few pairs I feel it would make it more of a hassle to babysit some expensive ones.

For sure once I've found a pair I like and are comfortable I will get a nice pair or two.

I was looking into transition lenses so I'm not swapping my sunglasses for regular glasses. Quite a bit pricier but worth it, I hope. I've also seen some lenses that are supposed to help with glare from having an astigmatism and that would be a Godsend, especially at night.

So I didn't want to spend $800+ for trial frames and lenses and whatnot.

This whole thread has made me feel so much better about the process, and the timing could not have been better!

I order my glasses on Aliexpress even. From as little as $2 to $30 (for the most special stuff like photochromic lenses).

Lenses are not expensive. They're just pieces of plastic, just like the frame.

> Replace as needed

So here's the thing- I do exactly the same thing. Buy cheap classes. Use a kitchen paper towel or whatever is handy to clean them. But I have never had to replace a pair because of damage.

Every few years, my prescription changes enough to warrant replacement, and then I go and order another set of glasses from Zenni, and they always last until the next time, no matter how badly I treat them.

Be careful with using ultrasonic cleaners or using otherwise strong solutions because of the risk of taking off polarized/anti-glare lens coating, if you happened to have gotten it (you probably should have :)). Working in a lab that had ultrasonic cleaners, I used to do this and it happened with me after a few washes.

It is indeed a bit of a pain to clean it (I'm lazy and just don't... unless it gets really, really bad). This is why I'm strongly considering LASIK, don't have to pay for glasses for years ahead, don't have to deal with inconvenience of having it all the time (and especially when traveling and when doing physical exercise), don't have to deal with glare at night-time driving. I'm nearsighted and have astigmatism so I have to think carefully about this. Happy to hear if folks have their experiences to share on getting LASIK!

I'm in the same boat as you, in fact I've got several eye consults lined up for next week.

I just wanted to say, LASIK is a catch-all term now-days. I would recommend to see if you're eligible for the ReLEX SMILE[0] proceedure. That's what I'm hoping for. There are some (disturbing) videos on youtube that show the process step-by-step[1].

The biggest fear for me for traditional LASIK has always been the flap. SMILE is flapless.

[0] https://med.stanford.edu/eyelaser/procedures/ReLEXSMILE.html

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41-CqynUHE

This is interesting! I recently read that new tech has also allowed PRK to become better and thus more popular again - I compared it to LASIK a while ago and would probably have leaned more towards PRK from what I read.

This looks like the best of both worlds, great idea.

I got PRK last year because I didn't want the flap. I was supposed to have 20/20 or better vision after a month. Exactly one week later, my eyes had recovered to 20/15 and 20/18. The recovery honestly wasn't that bad and I forget that I've only had perfect vision for a year. One of the best investments in myself I've ever made!

What did you use with the ultrasonic cleaner? Just de-ionized water or any solution?

If I recall correctly, first I used to use di water, but later on I used a solution. Whatever protocol is used in biological labs to wash flasks and tubes, I pretty much followed that, I don't remember what washing solution I used, I recall it felt like soapy water. It's possible that latter might have been the problem.

I would expect that solution to be incredibly aggressive. Wouldn't be surprised if it was lye (which feels soapy because it turns the outer layers of your skin into soap).

I have had anti-glare lens coating but it always wears off because I clean my glasses with whatever softish fabric comes to hand. I'm not getting again because the last pair I had eroded in edgewise fashion so lenses look like the coastline of some unvisited continent, which is far more distracting than any glare in the worn-away areas.

I wish I could do this - I've asked my opticians if I can have lenses without the coating, but they've said that the lenses automatically come coated and there's nothing they can do. Which seems pretty strange given that the lenses are made to order, now that I think about it. Maybe it's something about the way they order the lenses in, where there's simply no spot to ask for no coating, and they don't want to / aren't allowed to pick up the phone?

I've been wearing glasses for about 20 years. I've gotten a new pair pretty much every year. Every single time I've gotten a new pair, I was given the offer for coatings as addons, never once did a shop in the midwest or east coast just tell me "they come with coatings". Are you in the US?

Nope, UK. And admittedly this was just a single optician, so maybe things are different elsewhere.

Try another one, I think they're hard-selling you.

Who has this kind of time? I've been wearing glasses since I was a kid too and my approach is: don't worry about it, clean them if things look bad.

Unless this is maybe parody and I failed to pick up on that?

Seriously it sounds exhausting. Wash them with mildly warm water and soap, dry them with a microfiber cloth, boom done.

The worst part of having some elaborate routine with an ultrasonic cleaner and all is that the moment after, your glasses will instantly start accumulating dust and probably get smudged. It's not going to be really clean for more than a few minutes. And that's fine, you probably shouldn't worry about it.

Personally I've had okay luck with the pre moistened lens wipes. You can clean your glasses then proceed to clean whatever screens in your car, phone, laptop, or other surfaces are close by. There's always something dirty within arms reach. No need to worry about destroying the coating.

Isopropyl wipes are my go to. I buy them in big boxes and carry them regularly.

My favorite solution as well. These work great for me: https://www.amazon.com/ZEISS-Lens-Wipes-Pre-Moistened-Eyegla...

Any reason you can’t use pure methanol to clean glasses? I don’t wear glasses so I don’t know the specifics, but that’s what we use to clean industrial laser lenses and any tiny speck or smudge or oil would immediately burn the protective coating. We also don’t touch the lens tissue when we clean it, rather we put methanol on the lens tissue and slide it across. Curved lenses are a bit more interesting but same method of cleaning.

Ought to generally be fine. That level of critical cleaning is kinda different from what glasses generally require.

Mine wind up with grease, fingerprints, dust, cooking oil, etc., so a good surfactant (i.e. dish soap) and some clean water tend to work pretty darn well.

If you want to finish 'em off with a critical-cleaning approach, go for it. The scratch/AR coatings on most glasses should be fine for both methanol and isopropanol. I would not, however, use solvents like acetone on plastic lenses of any kind; it'll probably destroy some of them.

Methanol works fine, it's great for removing the various things that soap and water won't remove (grease/oil). And yes, ideally wipe once in a single direction. Glasses are just another form of optics.

Pure methanol is a little annoying to source. It seems like you can only buy it from lab supply shops -- not impossible to get but not exactly at the local Walgreens.

All of this feels a little overkill for eyeglasses. Dish soap works very well (it's concentrated so don't use too much or you'll be rinsing a while) and most people have it in their kitchen. I personally mostly use hand soap in the bathroom -- works less well if it's a soap with lotion but most places don't have that. The added benefit is that you can do it almost any time or place without thinking too hard.

+1 I just use warm water and hand soap, followed by rinsing and then a gentle wipe with a soft microfiber towel (the kind you'd buy for washing a car actually).

I use isopropanol to clean mine, works great. I just use toilet paper for the cloth, but combined with the isopropanol you don't need to apply any pressure, so scratching doesn't seem to be an issue.

Isopropanol also evaporates quickly, so if there is any dirt left behind one can immediately see it.

It probably would be more than enough to clean the hair brushes, instead of the ultrasonic thing.

It's very toxic and absorbed through bare skin. It's overkill, particularly with isopropanol being sufficiently effective and safe and easy to buy.

Do you really mean methanol? It’s toxic even at low concentrations. Can permeate the skin and produces irreversible blindness.

RE: “overkill” - I agree, but this blog post/article prompted me to suggest this as a one step solution to eliminate multiple steps with multiple products as an alternative to what another commenter called “OCD.” A bottle of methanol, and tissue lens. Yes, you can’t find it everywhere, but you can buy it in bulk from a local lab supply store. If you’re cleaning constantly, keep it in a small dark glass bottle dropper that you can take with you.

I have used a variety of wipes to clean and/or dry my lenses over the years. This always left microscratches and damage to the AR coating over time.

Since I switched to the hand method, my lenses are in much better shape:

1) Clean hands with basic bar soap, leave soap suds on hands 2) Lightly rub lenses and frames with soapy fingers, taking care not to apply too much pressure and deposit skin oils 3) Rinse off with hot water 4) Shake glasses dry with both hands (carefully) 5) If tiny water spots bother you, or you can't wait for the remaining droplets to naturally dry, use a lint free glasses wipe to dab (not wipe) them dry

Be careful with hot water, according to my essilor, that‘s what destroyed the coating on mine…

I've never done anything other than breathe on them and polish with the bottom of my shirt. What am I missing?

Grease is not entirely caught by cloth; the stickier/large the grease patch, the more it will spread over the lens, making it time consuming to clean.

My lenses have oleophobic coating. I find breathing on them and rubbing with microfiber cloth to be quite effective even when they are coated with grease.

Try running them through a soap cleaning once. You might be surprised at how much cleaner they'll end up looking after (been there with my spouse!).

Depending on what your lenses are made of, and if you have fragile coatings on them, and if you live around or work with fine abrasives, this works fine.

I miss actual glass, uncoated lenses.

Not missing them at all. In fact, wouldn't wear them even if I'm being paid to be that. Stone age tech :)

I hate the metalized coatings they put on lenses these days because they are so fragile. The antireflective coatings "craze" when exposed to thermal cycles. My current pair I ordered without AR coating, and they still came with a "hardness" coating. All it takes to ruin it is a spattering of aerosol sunscreen in passing.

A few weeks ago, one lens got bad enough that I soaked it in glass etching acid overnight and then polished it with Novus acrylic polish. In the last month I spent a lot of time outdoors with folk using sunscreen, and the other lens has gotten bad enough that I need to polish it as well.

That's the reason I go cheaper on sunglasses. You can find quite good ones for 15-20 and I go through 2-3 pairs a year. No matter how well one takes care of them the coatings and lenses get ruined quite quickly..

The one recommendation about going with cheap sunglasses is getting polarized ones. Good polarization is practically half the difference between the ultra cheap and the really fancy sunglasses in my experience. Decent polarization really cuts down on glare. There are several brands out there making pretty affordable pairs of glasses with polarization filters on them. I get mine for ~$35, often last me at least a year or so.

Hah, it's great to hear that the etch-and-polish approach actually works! I've considered doing this to my glasses to remove messed-up antireflective coatings, but always chickened out before actually doing it.

You aren't going to get it perfect. There's always going to be fine scratches, and probably visible ripple texture when you look at the lens from several inches away. When wearing the glasses, though, it looks just fine. It's definitely an improvement from the damaged coatings.

On a previous pair with AR coating, I tried sanding rather than etching. It was a lot more effort, and I caused some distortion on the outer edges of the lenses. It was still an overall improvement from the messed up AR coating. I was taking high dose corticosteroids at the time, and the AR coating was driving me so crazy to the point that, if sanding didn't work, they were going to be smashed with a hammer!

Hotest water you can stand. Blast copious amount over lenses, both sides. This removes some grease and large grit. Put several drops of detergent on finger tip and rub onto thumb tip. Using thumb and finger coat detergent onto both sides of both lenses then rub gently. A few seconds is all you need. This removes all remaining oils and suspends any remaining grit preventing friction scratches during cleaning. Rinse lenses with hot water and gently dry with paper towel. Hold up to light to check progress. Remaining smears if any come off with paper towel. Been doing it for decades. It never scratches and it cleans like new.

This is really bad advice, about hot water. When I was in New Zealand once, where you sometimes still encounter faucets with a separate hot water and cold water tap, I accidentally ran my glasses through the very hot water coming out of the hot water tap and it completely destroyed the coating on the lenses, it was as if I had run sandpaper over them.

The water only needs to be lukewarm. i.e. rinse glasses with lukewarm water, then get a drop of dish soap on fingers and rub fingers through a bit more water to dilute the soap, then gently scrub the lenses as you describe, and then rinse the glasses again with lukewarm water. Almost all the water will sheet off.

I would strongly advise against paper towels. With bad luck these contain small splinters of wood that might be just as sturdy enough to cause small scratches. Happened to me on a pair that I had just worn for 6 weeks.

Odd article. Claims to be inspired by camera lens cleaning methods, but I've never heard of any photog using an "oil remover", and certainly not an ultrasonic cleaner.

"Inspired" doesn't mean you do the exact same things, sometimes you introduce your own ideas, not all necessarily good :)

The residual oil remover mentioned is just a fancy name for lens cleaner that you can pick up in most supermarkets:

http://www.newprouk.co.uk/images/ROR/ROR%20data%20sheet.pdf

I've used this stuff to clean my SLR lenses (and my spectacles) but just by squirting a small amount onto a microfibre cloth rather than directly.

> certainly not an ultrasonic cleaner.

Yeah, I think I'd rather not be exposing my glasses to the rigours of the sonic tank :)

I've never had a problem keeping my glasses clean. I understand people who take them on/off having problems, but if you just have them on all the time, what are you doing!? I clean mine max once a day, usually can go 2-3 without cleaning.

The only time I ran into problems was working with polishing metals. My glasses were getting scratched with the small particles/dust you couldn't even see. I almost thought they were faulty.

I fixed it by just rinsing before putting soap (before I would directly lather soap). Now I just rinse on both sides, soap softly, rinse, dry with softest tissues around.

In a pinch some alcohol will do, but do not like it or other cleaning solutions. Tissues only take 1-2 wipes unlike microfiber clothes which I also don't like.

I avoid touching the glasses themselves, only ever touch the frame (only part it's worn in 5 years is where I touch it), never put them in a case, always put them on my nightstand to sleep.

I replace them maybe once every two years, usually because I've ended up scratching them when accidentally hitting something. They're regular CR 39, nothing fancy (I like it due to it's high Abbe number, cannot stand the chromatic aberration on high index lenses).

Longer hair I find adds a lot to glasses getting dirty, also windy conditions with dirt blowing in the air

I tend to enjoy sports and manual labor, so end up sweating all over my glasses a few times a week. Because of this, the oil removal process is the piece in which I'm most interested.

I have used a glass cleaner spray bottle (which was methanol) when that ran out, I just refilled it with 95% ethanol (grain alcohol) and it seems to be fine.

I am curious about RoR and its chemical makeup. Is it that different than an alcohol?

Note that I've seen ultrasonic cleaners damage the coatings on glasses (especially if you have Transitions Lenses). At the edges of the lenses I've seen the coatings come off after several rounds through the cleaner. I've seen this with two different models of cleaner but I'm not sure if it happens with all of them.

As a farm kid who spent time in a dusty barn every day, my glasses were often so dirty that they looked opaque to others. I didn't notice and didn't care.

How the brain processes visual information is really weird. I'm not surprised that a slight speck of dirt would really bother some people but not others.

Dust is fine, you adapt, but with grease it gets blurry and there isn't much ability to correct. I really noticed this when I switched to new glasses with a hydrophobic coating that handled grease very differently.

> The ultrasonic cleaner and distilled water are more expensive and have greater ongoing costs

Distilled water should be pretty cheap. You can sometimes buy it as "ironing" water. I use it for my watercooled PCs (plus coolant concentrate), in Switzerland it's about 1 CHF a litre from the supermarkets.

Is there a reason to buy distilled water? Why don't you just make it yourself (e.g. https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Distilled-Water)

What I found is sufficient to get my glasses spotless is: dip in hot water, dry with paper towel, dip in hot water, dry with paper towel, rinse in cold water, dry with paper towel, rinse in cold water, dry with paper towel.

Anything less than that I would find my glasses were not really clean.

won't the paper towel cause micro-scratches?

It probably does but it gets the glasses clean. Many things I've tried (including those microfiber clothes) just smear contamination around making the glasses at least as dirty if not dirtier than when I started.

In the passenger terminal of JFK airport somewhere there is a device where you put your glasses inside a clear plastic box and it makes a big show of washing them like a miniature car wash. Takes a few quarters, seems to work pretty well. I've always wanted one for my home.

I just buy a pack of 200 Zeiss Lens Wipes every 6 months (~£12).

They are amazing and quick. Money well spent.

As a late 40-something I've recently had to start using readers. I went to the optometrist and got a £70 pair which I broke within the first 6 months. After one or two more pairs I thought - fuck this and just ordered a cheap pack of 5 readers at the right strength for a tenner off Amazon.

For 2 quid a pair, I treat these now as disposables and I've never looked back. I use the microfibre cloth + breath method to clean them and this works well.

But having 10 pairs of specs lying around at work, in the car, at home, etc was the best call I ever made.

Granted my prescription is standard - if I had astigmatism or similar it might be different, but for those who just need readers this is a no brainer.

Seems overkill. I use pure dish detergent under the tap directly with my fingers (you can feel the dirt, do not press against the lens). Dry with a new/clean paper towel by pressing (buffering? do not drag the paper across the lens). Dirt cheap, perfect result in seconds, can be done everywhere. Normal hand soap contains moisturizer, so this is not indicated (but generally works too although might leave stains).

If your lens is being scratched by this try spending a bit more on better glass. There's no point in skimping on something you hold on your eyes the entire day. Mine always lasted more than 7 years, and I only ever needed to change due to loss of acuity.

> If your lens is being scratched by this try spending a bit more on better glass. There's no point in skimping on something you hold on your eyes the entire day.

Doesn't always work that way. I never skimp on glasses, atm I'm looking through 500+€ Zeiss lenses (that's just for lenses, frame price not included), I've had them for a year and have one visible scratch. I always take care of my specs, always carefult when cleaning or putting on table but still have one pretty big and annoying scratch. How did it get there, I have no idea.

A single solid scratch might be caused by an accident of sorts, this can always happen.

The kind of damage the OP is speaking about seem to match the description of very light superficial scratches causing diffused softening. Could be damaged coating, or just the glass being too soft.

I've only seen this happen on cheap (and normally polymer) lenses.

The breath and piece of cloth method worked so well, I really didn't think of needing another method.

I'm curious on what the author used to test his cleaning methods, because it seemed to only appears after 2 years of using this method.

Yeah, exactly this: there's no way for the author to tell if the method is actually any better, so this article seems a little premature!

OP sounds a little.. intense, but hey. As long as they're not hurting anyone.

Since we're talking about eyewear care -- here's my approach. I have spray bottle of water, rubbing alcohol and dish soap (mostly water). This gets off any but the most stubborn grime and grease rainbows. Couple of spritzes then a wipe with a soft clean cloth.

(The original use for the spray bottle was to kill house flies, it's extremely effective)

Lol I think the OP is just getting older and his vision is getting worse.

My vision is poor (-600) but was stable for 25 years. In the last two years and especially in the last year once I got into my 50s, my vision has dropped like a rock. I need reading glasses for the first time in my life and when it’s too dark I can’t read anything. Switching between phone and tv is HARD and I can’t read properly for several minutes while my eyes adjust.

sigh What a drag it is, getting older…

Rinse under the faucet with medium-warm water to get any dust/grime off, then dry using medium pressure with a hand towel size microfiber cloth. That's all you need to do.

I use the cloth for a couple months and then toss it. They're never the same after being washed, and they're cheap enough. I bought a 24 pack for $7 on Amazon in 2017 and I'm still working my way through it.

I've had this pair of glasses for about 4 years and they're perfect.

Nobody uses baking soda? Really? I still can't find anything better to remove the fingerprints and other stains off eyeglasses. I would use a pinch of soda, add a few drops of water, then gently rub it around the glass, repeat on the other side and finally rinse it all off. It works better than alcohol and soap. Leaves no residue, no streaks, nothing. Putting glasses on after, feels like switching to 8K from 1080p.

you're kidding right, is it plastic or glass lenses? no microscratches? lol

I'm not kidding at all. When you add some water to that pinch of baking soda it turns into a mushy puree, rubbing it gently won't harm the surface. Sodium bicarbonate is an alkali, and great at dissolving grease. It removes fingerprint stains off the glass extremely well. And I think it does a better job of keeping the glass non-attractive to dust particles.

No, there won't be any micro-scratches if it's used gently. After all, I'm not telling you to use kosher table salt, right? Seriously, just try baking soda.

My glasses are always dirty, I use my tshirt to clean them every day or so. They are full of little scratches, but if I don't focus on them, I don't notice them. My old pair (which I keep in case my current pair breaks unexpectedly) are even worse, with big visible scratches. They (the old pair) lasted at least 4 or 5 years, and the current ones are at least 3 years old, but I don't really remember.

I bought a device with some kind of cloth pads held opposite each other, and when you close it they brush up against an inner pad which presumably removes grease from them.

It cost £20 and I was dubious about it, but it cleans better than I've ever managed by myself with a spray. Lasted about 1.5y before it stopped being effective (just moves grease around rather than picking it up) and I went and bought another one.

I got LASIK. One of the best decisions I have ever made.

EDIT TO ADD:

I got the surgery 3 years ago, I'm 42 now. Post surgery I am at 20/15 vision.

No complications, and no side effects.

If anyone is interested, here is the video of the entire procedure (they even offered to live stream it on facebook for me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4YOuS-nznk

Please tell us more. How old are you, how long ago was the surgery, how is your vision now, any side effects?

Sure thing. I edited my original comment.

Thank you. Very encouraging results.

If I have a proper cleaning cloth and some cleaning spray handy I'll use that, otherwise I'll just use my shirt or a clean microfiber cloth. Even with that abuse, the coating on my lenses tends to last roughly 2 years. I've never managed to cause enough scratching on my lenses to bother me before it was time to see about getting new ones anyway.

A small ultrasonic cleaner for my frames is a really good idea that I'd never considered, mostly because I didn't know they were so cheap. My lenses are trivially easy to take out by removing two screws, something I require in my frames since discovering the feature, so no worries about damaging them in the cleaner. My frames sure could use it.

I have only used two pairs of glasses for around 12 years, I replaced my old ones only because I left them at the gym and never got them back.

The magic: I just bought the glasses at good place (not the most expensive brand in my country, but quite decent) and picked the "greatest package" of features. They offered me like four features to pick from: - anti blue light - scratch resistance - scratch resistance level 2 - something else I don't remember but sounded useful

so I picked them all. The frames wasn't anthing top-branded so I paid like $200. The prices may differ around the world, I know but it's still lower than any mid-range smartphone and I suspect it should be similar in most of the world.

I used to use a t-shirt without any fluid for years (results were good enough), but since covid I clean my glasses with hand sanitizer with 60% alcohol (water based, not that jelly thing that would smear the view) and 4-layered tissues, the softest ones I can find (I have allergy, so I use tissues all the times, so just by "coincidence" I always have the softest tissues you can find with me).

Scratches? I can see a few, I suspect they all happened when I dropped my glasses on the concrete. I once sit on my glasses, I once dropped something heavy on the glasses I left on the floor near my bed. Frames got bended and they don't keep on my head that good anymore, so I drop them like twice a month, especially when I'm working physically on something. But still don't get scratches even by that.

For contrast:

My girlfriend bought the "greatest package" in a quite no-name shop (but with high rating on Google Maps, everyone is recommending the place), paid around 80% of what I paid, just because she liked the frames they were offering. After three years her glasses are scratched like hell, they look like a thing made from scratches. It's definitely time to replace them. Idk if she ever dropped them, she cleans them the same way I do. But those tiny scratches are definitely caused just by cleaning.

So to everyone I recommend trying to find a good store for your glasses and spend bigger amount of money on them. If you're replacing glasses every two years your investment on something better will return fast. If you are low on money - prefer good lenses over looks.

It will still be cheaper than ultrasonic cleaner and easier than treating your everyday item like an ancient artifact :)

https://www.amazon.com/Pre-Moistened-Lens-Cleaning-Wipes-Eff...

You can thank me later! Never leave home without a bunch of these.

Never had any luck with any kind of wipes (prepackages, microfiber, with a solution, without: they always smear things across the lens rather than clean them. The only way to have truly transparent lenses for me is the water finger dishsoap process.

Before the camel hair brush, we typically use a blower on the lenses. The least you touch that expensive glass, the better!

I read this and was baffled. I've never broken a pair of glasses. The article made me realize I needed to clean my glasses. I wiped them off with a wipe from a pack of wipes I always use.

A few hours later, I just realized one of the hinges on my glasses has no tension anymore. It just swings freely. What a strange coincidence.

I switched to contact lenses (monthlies first and then to dailies) and I do not miss any of these cleaning rituals.

How long have you used contact lenses? I used contacts from 2005-2017 or so, eventually switched away because it was annoying when I couldn't just take a nap easily, my eyes dried out a lot when I use a computer all day for work, and contacts are not very bikepacking compatible. When I first switched to contacts, it was such a breath of fresh air, but I've been back to glasses for years now and have no desire to go back. My life seems a lot simpler now that I have a good pair of transitions and a good pair of indoor glasses.

There's a number of contact products that allow you to sleep in them. Mine do leave me feeling a little gummy in the morning but it generally fades shortly after waking up.

A previous brand (the air optix?) I lived in for a month at a time and was fine though perhaps I just didn't care as much.

Not OP, but another data point. I have been wearing contacts since I was 16, in 1994, most of the time. I keep a pair of glasses and wear them occasionally (perhaps every couple month on average, or more rarely) for a few days or a week. First monthly lenses, then dailies for a long time. I got lazy and started to sleep with them for days/weeks, which is not to be recommended, but it's mostly worked fine. I've had an infection two or three times over the years.

They do get sticky sometimes, and I really have to blink to get started in the morning, or late nights

This summer I tried with contacts made to wear for up to a month without taking them out. When testing them out I learned I have also become astigmatic, which is a new experience; the contacts adjust in the eye to stay in the right angle, which makes mornings harder, as it takes a while for them to adjust. During daytime they mostly work well and I see much clearer now. However, I'm also getting older and these are now adjusted for seeing far, so for reading comfortably I'm going to need reading glasses/terminal glasses.

My old glasses are scratched pretty badly and the various coatings have rubbed off in the middle, which is pretty annoying. I mostly wear them for giving my eyes some rest (I have recently rediscovered how nice it can be too just remove them and not see anything) and because I really like the frames (Shuron Ronsir). They also have great looking clipons making them my favorite sunglasses.

Close to 10 years. I don’t take naps but I feel your struggle - it is uncomfortable to wake up wearing lenses, for sure. My eyes do not get dry (I use BL Biotrue dailies FWIW), but individual physiology is definitely a factor. I do quite a bit of active stuff, like volleyball, bicycle, snorkeling and managing glasses in these settings is a hassle for me.

I wish I could do this but I really can’t. The dailies dry out super fast, and sometimes fall out. And then they stick causing a weird lag when I move my eyes too fast. Maybe it’s my eye shape but I wanted to love contacts and really couldn’t make it work.

Exact same experience. Amazing visual clarity, however considering how long I can work for in a day or multi-day period, dailies just aren't convenient.

Sorry about your experience! Looks like your lenses are pretty thick - probably you have large +- prescription? For me, my myopia is not very strong, so dealing with thinner lenses alleviates the problems your described.

I used contact lenses for many years, starting with RGPs when I was in high school and later switching to soft lenses. However, as I and my eyes have gotten old, I've found that wearing contacts for more than a few hours leads to eye pain, and switching to different brands or contacts with higher water content didn't really make a difference. So nowadays it's glasses-only for me.

Love these tips!

Personally not a huge fan of the Zeiss wipes, seems to be too much solution on them.

The Target Brand...yes Target Brand wipes are great. Just enough solution to clean and not be abrasive and also evaporate without wet streaks on the lens. Also extremely cheap (the bottle version of the solution is nice as well.)

A service where you pay a few bucks and send your glasses for deep cleaning, refurbishing of hinges, and touch up paint etc. would be cool, assuming you have redundant pairs or don't wear them every day. I do notice the grime that accumulates in the nooks and crannies of my glasses.

> I do notice the grime that accumulates in the nooks and crannies of my glasses.

Basic wood toothpicks work really well for getting rid of anything that might build up around the little nubs near your nose. It takes like 30 seconds and it's something you might do once a month.

You should rinse with water to remove debris before rubbing. I just put a drop of dish soap and rub with my fingers and then rinse. Then I dry off with a glass cleaning fabric. I use a toothbrush rather than my thumb to do a more thorough cleaning if desired.

That's a sure-fire way to strip any coatings you've got.

Dawn dish soap should be fine to use as long as there isn't any other junk like lotions.

A toothbrush, on the other hand, is completely not recommended.

> I then wipe the lens with a dry microfibre cloth...

> Once a week, I use an oil remover...

Intimacy / kisses tend to leave my lenses smudged with face oils and sometimes makeup. Dry cloths don't seem to remove that very well. This works for me:

1. Spray with lens cleaner

2. Wipe off with a microfiber cloth

I feel like this article lays the groundwork for a high quality artisanal eyeglass cleaning video.

Reminds me just a touch of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBb9O-aW4zI

I worked in an optical lab some 20+ years ago to pay for college. Here's how I clean mine:

Fill a clean sink with warm, mildly soapy (dawn dish) water.

Let them soak in that for a few minutes.

Rinse them clean with fresh water.

Spray with lens cleaner (basically it's water with a touch of isopropyl alcohol), thoroughly.

Dry with an old cotton baby diaper. I've had a handful of these since my lab days. They're so freaking soft now, it's crazy.

Here's key: Never ever ever let your towel hit a counter. If you do, you'll scratch a lens. As author of the post writes, keep them in a bag. They come out of the bag, clean the glasses, they go back in the bag.

Inspect your glasses. Make sure screws are tight. Look at the nose pads, replace before they get funky. Seriously, they're touching your freaking face.

About every 6 months, I do the above, but I take them completely apart first. I'll spray the screws with alcohol and rub them back and forth on a towel to get the oils and such off. I'll clean the bezels where the lenses go. The nose pads fit in with screws. They insert into a cup and the screw goes through that way. I'll get a paper towel and make a point and twist it around in the cup to clean the oils out of there. Finally I'll wipe everything down as per above and reassemble.

Don’t ever use any form of paper. I saw my optician get ready to clean my new subscription glasses with the type of paper towel that you use to dry your hands with - I didn’t scream at her, but yelped so that she stopped what she was about to be doing.

> subscription glasses

Is this a thing, or a typo of prescription? Subscriptions would be very helpful when you have children with glasses. Probably ludicrously expensive though.

It is a thing. Like with phones you can pay a monthly fee and renew your glasses every year.

I buy a 500 count box of lens wipes and clean them whenever they get smudged enough to notice.

I get inexpensive glasses from Zenni so they're almost disposable.

Cleaning them like your the old man from Toy Story restoring Woody to collectable quality just feels like overkill.

> The ultrasonic cleaner and distilled water are more expensive and have greater ongoing costs, although it looks like £13 of distilled water will last for about 3 years

Weird complaint, because distilled water is $1 CAD for 4 litres here at any supermarket.

For some reason we don't have distilled water quite so readily available in the UK. I have absolutely no idea why.

I usually clean sunglasses by spraying alcohol and wiping with a paper towel. Pharmacies here sell that liquid in small plastic bottles with spray nozzle, the liquid contains 70% ethanol, 30% distilled water.

I would expect that to destroy many coatings.

I sometimes use the lens cleaning wipes. Other times, I just wash them with liquid soap and water and pat them dry with a towel or paper towel (or anything as long as it doesn't leave lint).

I've noticed over the years, the primary failure mode for my lenses is the coating being scratched. I wonder if anyone has a good way to have that coating repaired or replaced?

I got lasik eye surgery and got perfect vision in 20 minutes, more than 15 years ago. Best decision ever (don’t skimp on this, go to the best professional you can afford)

You don’t need any of this.

Water and Kimwipes. They’re usually used in lab settings and are properly lint free paper wipes that can get anything optically clean.

Warm water is the most you’ll ever need.

Wash with water and (very little) soap. Use your fingers to gently rub.

Rinse with water until lens become hidrophobic again (signaling all the soap is gone).

Dry with air from your mouth (strong blows).

This is exactly the content I want to see here. I love it. It's so over the top and min-maxed. This is optimized beyond efficiency and I whole-heartedly approve.

Ain't no way I could brush the dust off, it's all glued on by oil. I guess I'm a fat fucker and produce way more oil than normal, though...

Tried to leave a comment on this blog post, but the confirmation link I get via email gives me this error: `Invalid link or already submitted comment`

Absolutely first thing to do is hold the glasses under the faucet to get dust particles off.

Follow with, as others have said, dish soap, fingers and microfiber.

If you think you can withstand and are a candidate for lasik, I highly recommend it. Like any medical procedure, weigh options, cost, risk.

Daily contacts are also a great alternative if your prescription isn’t too high. I used to use monthlies, and only recently found dailies with my level of astigmatism. The difference in comfort is pretty significant for me.

And if you can tolerate wearing them.

How do you all super-clean the inside of your car windshield? I find those to get a lot dirtier and greasier than my eyeglasses!

Also kimwipes.

I spray with Windex, rub the lenses with my thumbs, let sit a few minutes, rinse with water, tap on the sink, then let dry.

These rituals are pretty time consuming compared to my routine:

1) use a kimwipe 2) use another kimwipe if they are still foggy

Beyond this, throw them in an ultrasonic cleaner or the dishwasher if you want them shiny. Buying glasses that do not have an artificially overinflated price is quite liberating.

Edit: Gonna assume the salty downvote is because I said "ritual" isn't it? Heaven forbid that anyone else know about a convenient product purpose built for cleaning optics.

I just use some IPA and a microfiber cloth.

Man, I've so many better things to do with my time on the planet than cleaning my specs.

...an IPA? Are these beer goggles?

Eh sorta... I wouldn't neck it, but it'd definitely knock you out.

Isopropyl alcohol - great for cleaning glass-wear and dirty electronics.

I just use isopropanol solution (70% isopropanol/30% water) then wipe with a bit of toilet paper/whatever

I wipe mine on my t shirt. Rain, sweat, mud, face grease, food stuff. Works every time. Sometime shower with them.

this reminded me of how thankful i was to finally find contacts that work for me. glasses are annoying (to me).

it took ten years, lots of disappointment, and an old-school OD doing a number on my eyes after an allergic reaction to contact lens cleaner, but it was one of the best things to happen in 2021.

(I use Acuvue Oasys toric dailies.)

My glasses are always clean. Every morning I use a single sheet of toilet paper and it does the work perfectly.

The article isn't about how to make them clean, the article is about how not to scratch them during the process of cleaning.

OH! That's why I can't focus in low light! Time to get those new glasses finally I guess...

It seems like my vision quality changes rapidly enough that I don't need glasses to last more than a couple years. And like others here I just order a bunch on zenni. Bonus: I like that I can get a bunch of styles without worrying about wasting hundreds on a single pair.

Shall I do all that after or before my 'American psycho' routine?

I just lick the lens and rub with a cloth. Spit and shine.

Tissue or my shirt. It’s that simple.

Why don't you wash it with water?

Dude, please use margins. The writing is far too close to the edge of the screen for comfortable reading.

This, but for keyboards.

This is the approach I use https://www.wikihow.com/Clean-Keycaps

Denture tablets are gentle enough to not remove the legends from the keycap, especially if its laser printed and not etched, double shot, or dye sublimated legends. You can speed the drying process by putting your keycaps in a dryer bag wrapped with a towel and shaking the water loose from the keycaps. As for cleaning the rest of the board, i use an air duster to blow out any "board chow" that has settled between the keycap posts. For the rest of the keyboard, water with a drop or two if dishwasher detergent. You can use other cleaners but be careful of stronger, undiluted solvents as the denaturing effect in some ingredients will ruin the case over time.

Tip #1: Try a mechanical keyboard.

Tip #2: Try a split keyboard.

Giving any of that a heartfelt attempt, I promise you, makes it really difficult to go back to the old way. Some mechanical keyboards are very durable. I've been using Kinesis Advantage boards and can you believe it? I washed them multiple times. First time I spilled beer. The keyboard worked, but some keys felt different, they've become "sticky". I opened it, removed all the keycaps, took out the PCBs and washed them in warm soapy water. After drying and reassembling, the keyboard worked better than the first time I unboxed it. The second time I spilled soup on it, without any hesitation I opened it; and washed it again; and it worked just as before. I had more incidents (with different boards) and each time I would follow the same procedure, and the keyboards still work.

So, if the idea of washing the keyboard feels appealing to you, then Tip #1.

suddenly very self-conscious about my very dirty glasses...

This title is missing a word:

"How I Clean my Glasses"

I half expected a post where someone brags about cleaning glasses. HOW I clean my glasses is pretty interesting for those of us who wear them. Mine are just ALWAYS dirty, I don't know what the heck I keep doing to them.

HN removes the How in submissions automatically

HN strips "How" on submissions. It's just one of many annoying auto-edits.

Pretty sure this is an automated word removal action by the HN submission form. There've been threads about the words that are filtered out by default. It comes down to trying to make titles less clickbait-y. Though I do agree that "How" does provide some important context in this case.

Yes, sometimes it doesn't work at all. Most of the time it does. A mod has fixed this one.

HN has a strict "don't editorialize article titles" policy, backed by a bot that automatically editorializes article titles for you. It's great.

And sometimes titles are editorialized manually:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31396861&p=2#31397151

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31638648#31643597

Those titles weren't editorialized. They were edited in keeping with HN's title rule, which calls for editing titles when they are either misleading or clickbait.

I realize it's annoying when there's an edit that you don't agree with—and I would never claim that we get every case correct. But HN's overall approach to titles is one of the easiest things to defend about the entire site. It makes an enormous difference to the quality of the front page.

Edit: you can't compare "HN as it is" to "HN as it is, but without the title edits I dislike". That's not a possible alternative. The alternative is "HN without the current title policy", and that would be a front page inundated with linkbait and sensationalism—exactly what most people come here to avoid.

The title policy is fine, but I find it really weird that it's defended as "not editorializing" -- by your own admission, you edit titles to put your own spin on the article's contents, and focus on something different than what the original title wanted to focus on.

"Why I no longer recommend Julia" is a perfectly good title, it's prompting a question which the article will hopefully answer. Changing it to focus on correctness and composability bugs, rather than the bigger picture of why the author can't recommend the language, is putting your own spin, aka, editorializing. And that's fine! But you really should admit it, rather than crouching behind a weird defense.

I'm happy to admit mistakes (and correct them!) but this is inaccurate. We don't edit titles to put our own personal spin on a topic, which is what the word editorializing means. We look closely at the article itself to find what it is actually saying. If we do replace a title, we replace it with representative language from the article itself wherever possible. This has been the case for a long time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

That does involve some interpretive judgment—because why pick one phrase rather than another—but less than you might think, because nearly every article has a point where the author says what they're actually writing about.

We never do this to convey an opinion of our own. We don't much care what people think or what an article says. We care whether the title accurately represents what the article is saying, and does so in a way that isn't baity, because that is the biggest influence on discussion quality.

The submission you guys are bringing up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31396861) illustrates the point. "Why I no longer recommend Julia" is a baity title, because it doesn't say anything specific about why. It's just a pointer that says "I boo Julia". "Boo $language" is for sure flamebait on this site.

Such titles generate threads that are just generic boo-vs.-yay ventings between people who like $thing and people who don't. The substantive points of the article are lost under such a title. This is not true on the original blog, because there the title is just the first sentence, and any comments show up only at the end. But it's definitely true on an internet forum where the title is the entire representation of the article for most readers and commenters.

For that reason, we chose to change the title, and for that we looked at the article (https://yuri.is/not-julia/) to find where it says what it is actually about—the "representative language" I mentioned above. This was not hard to find—it's in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th paragraphs of the OP. Particularly the 4th, which reads:

My conclusion after using Julia for many years is that there are too many correctness and composability bugs throughout the ecosystem to justify using it in just about any context where correctness matters.

That's the article's own summary of what it says, so we made it the title. Basically we followed the pointer and replaced it with what it points to.

How about the second example? The linked article is decidedly not a technical specification or even a discussion about any details of OpenStreetMap's Data Model. The article lacks any snippets of code or map data. It is quite clearly a defense of the simplicity of OpenStreetMap's data model (using analogies and anecdotes) as reflected by the article’s title. How, then, could one possibly justify the title change?

Sorry for the delay in replying. I think you have a stronger case about that example. Most likely we changed the title to make it less baity—"In Defense of" doesn't really add much information except "Fight", and that's a bad way to prime a thread.

Having now read more of the article, though, I agree with you that the title edit changed the focus in a misleading way. I've changed it back now. Maybe "The simplicity of OpenStreetMap's data model", or something like that, might have been an ok compromise, but it's too late to matter.

Moderation is guesswork. Inevitably, we guess wrong sometimes. The best thing is for users to tell us when we've got something wrong, because then we can correct it. In the future, if you would let us know at hn@ycombinator.com instead of posting in the thread, where we're unlikely to see it, we can correct things while the thread is still live. We do that all the time (many times a day), but we can't correct mistakes we don't know about!

> Most likely we changed the title to make it less baity—"In Defense of" doesn't really add much information except "Fight", and that's a bad way to prime a thread.

Such words also signals value, since they signal that someone has something significant to contribute to the conversation. For an extensive discussion about how such words signal value, see Larry McEnerney’s lecture The Craft of Writing Effectively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

A more value-signalling title with less “Fight” might have been “The benefits of simplicity in OpenStreetMap's data model”.

> The benefits of simplicity in OpenStreetMap's data model

That would have been a great edit. I won't bother doing it now since it's too late to matter, but if you come up with any of those in the future, I'd love to hear about them.

The bot removes common clickbait words ("How to...", "12 reasons to...", etc.), and you can change it back if it's not warranted.

Don't confuse "edit" with "editorialize". Editorializing is editing a title to put one's own spin on it.

HN's actual rule isn't hard to find—it's in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, which is linked at the bottom of every page and which commenters here ought to be familiar with. This is what it says: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

Note that "unless".

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